The Grand Chessboard: Ukraine, the game key in the game of world control.
Neoconservatives planned regime change throughout the Middle East and North Africa 20 years ago. Robert Parry correctly points out that the Neocons have successfully “weathered the storm” of disdain after their Iraq war fiasco. But the truth is that Obama has long done his best to try to implement those Neocon plans.

Similarly, ever since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the U.S. has pursued a strategy of encircling Russia, just as it has with other perceived enemies like China and Iran.

In 1997, Obama’s former foreign affairs adviser, and president Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser – Zbigniew Brzezinski – wrote a book called The Grand Chessboard arguing that the U.S. had to take control of Ukraine (as well as Azerbaijan, South Korea, Turkey and Iran) because they were “critically important geopolitical pivots.”

A 2008 news report describes some of Zbigniew Brzezinski ideas in his book, to send the U.S. into war for world domination:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, once endorsed the creation and support of militant Islamic forces in Afghanistan, that were directed by accused 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden. Brzezinski had admitted to the provocation of a Soviet-Afghan war that claimed the lives of 1 million people in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Brzezinski also sanctioned the support of a southeast Asian regime that claimed the lives of up to 2 million during the 1970s, through execution, starvation and forced labor.

And in an interview, cites the same article, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser, admits that it was U.S. policy to support radical Islamists to undermine Russia. He admits that U.S. covert action drew Russia into starting the Afghan war in 1979. Asked if he has regrets about this, he responds, “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” Then he is asked if he regrets “having given arms and advice to future terrorists,” and he responds, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

From the History Commons: October 1997: Brzezinski Highlights the Importance of Central Asia to achieving world domination:

American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, in which he portrays the Eurasian landmass as the key to world power, and Central Asia with its vast oil reserves as the key to domination of Eurasia. He states that for the U.S. to maintain its global primacy, it must prevent any possible adversary from controlling that region. He notes: “The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.” He predicts that because of popular resistance to U.S. military expansionism, his ambitious Central Asian strategy cannot be implemented, “except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.” [Brzezinski, 1997, pp. 24-25, 210-11] The book also theorizes that the U.S. could be attacked by Afghan terrorists, precipitating a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and that the U.S. may eventually seek control of Iran as a key strategic element in the US’s attempt to exert its influence in Central Asia and the Middle East. [Brzezinski, 1997]

Regarding Ukraine, Brzezinski said (hat tip Chris Ernesto):

Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.

However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.

And now Obama is pushing us into a confrontation with Russia over Ukraine and the Crimea.

As Ernesto notes:

Late last year when Ukraine’s now-ousted president Viktor Yanukovych surprisingly canceled plans for Ukrainian integration into the European Union in favor of stronger ties with Russia, the U.S. may have viewed Ukraine as slipping even further out of its reach.

At that point, with the pieces already in place, the U.S. moved to support the ousting of Yanukovych, as evidenced by the leaked phone conversation between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland [arch-Neocon Robert Kagan’s wife] and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. When peaceful protests were not effective in unseating Yanukovych, the violence of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda party and Right Sector was embraced, if not supported by the west.
In today’s Ukraine, the U.S. runs the risk of being affiliated with anti-Semitic neo-Nazis, a prospect it probably feels can be controlled via a friendly western media. But even if the risk is high, the U.S. likely views it as necessary given the geopolitical importance of Ukraine, as Brzezinski mapped out in 1997.

In other words, Obama is following the same old playbook that the Neocons have been pushing for more than a decade.